#the brotherhood of loveable mutant idiots

[ohmygillygoshoppler]

A little snippet of a larger story im working on for my homies on discord. One of our prompts for this month gave me a little bit of inspiration, so I just started writing.

This takes place during the scene where all of the kids get together and play a good wholesome game of hide-and-seek. :)

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"1... 2... 3... 4..."

The brotherhood boys and the X-kids all made a run for it as Callista started counting. A game of hide-and-seek, from the Brotherhood Boarding House, to Xavier's institute. About a mile walk, fifteen or twenty minutes away. The objective is for everyone from their respective teams to make it to the institute without getting caught. If Callie caught you, you were out. The team with the most members left would be the victors. The Brotherhood boys were all more than eager to play a scary game, but it was Xavier's bunch that needed some convincing.

So Dominik, Pietro, Fred, Tabitha, and Todd faced off against Scott, Evan, Kitty, Kurt and Jean. Callie was it. It was almost 10 o'clock at night. The perfect conditions for hide-and-seek.

Todd didn't pay much attention to where his boys had run off to, but he noticed Kitty and Dominik making a run for the school together. Toad was thankful he had decided to take the long way home from school today, otherwise he wouldn't have found- the perfect hiding spot.

Todd bounded over the fence and landed in an overgrown backyard with a filthy swimming pool turned green from disuse. It was haphazardly covered with a blue tarp covered in rotting leaves. He spotted it earlier when he, Cal and Kurt rode down to their favorite food hangout. This was a pretty snobbish neighborhood, but he could already tell that nobody had been there for a few weeks. He'd be safe here.

This is not my idea of a good fun game of hide-and-seek, Todd thought to himself as he slipped his shirt off and slinked into the pool. Callie not only moved where she wasn't supposed to, while they weren't looking, but was coming for them specifically. It was almost a nightmare scenario. He wondered where the others decided to hide.

Todd was trapped in a single spot, the filthy pool in someone's abandoned summer house. He gulped down a deep breath and submerged, the bottom of this pool covered in algae; thick, slimy and slick to the touch. The shapes and shadows of things up above darkened the spot in the pool where he was hiding, but there was no way she'd guess he was in there; nobody really had any idea.

He couldn't breathe underwater, but he could hold his breath for a long time. When he first discovered he was pretty good at staying under, he tracked his time on a stopwatch, but he hasn't been to the lake in a while. His longest time was about twelve minutes. He wondered if she would hear hi if he came if for air? The thought frightened him.

Dominik initiated this horrifying game, and now they all had to survive it. A lot of variables affected his way of making it through this, but one thing was for sure, he was loud when he was trying to be quiet. It's kind of flipping the switch of hide and seek. In addition to listening out for the once again minuscule sounds that allude to the nearby mutant, he had to do tasks like coming up for air- the least noisiest task- and keep the tarp on the pool from falling inside. Those sounds attracted her and made it more difficult to hear the sounds he was looking for underwater, and even worse, there was no real way to get out. She would hear him running around squishing with water. He suddenly regret his decision in its entirety.

At least the quiet gave him some time to think. He thought about the first thing that came into his mind; what he was up against.

Callista's mutation capitalized on a broad discomfort with things that fell into the uncanny valley; things that are too humanoid to be something fake, but moved to spastically or mechanically for something to pass as living. Similar to how she fits into the visual uncanny valley, the sounds she makes fit into the audio uncanny valley, where they're definitely closer to language than any other sound in her Library of Noises, but they're too distorted for anyone to recognize who made the words or what they mean. She dabbled in both unfortunate arts. She litters these sounds throughout the entirety of the space she controls, from quick flickering hallucinations to phone rings that sound a little too much like a real phone. Her laughter also counted as a vaguely vocal sound, as it sounded like a demented version of a child laughing.

These are some of the ways Callista flavored her games to make less complex scenarios more stressful. Todd had a sinking feeling that this was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to her scary games. Perhaps this was Callista's way of establishing herself as the Top Dog.

But since this was a game, there was a condition; something had to be sacrificed to allow them the chance to think under pressure and win the game. At least she gave them all a fighting chance, telling them all he needed to know about visual signals and audio clues.

"Don't stop. Don't make any noise. Don't let me catch you." He remembered that warning as he peered up at the water's surface. He thought he heard something.

While it was never silent out here, it was remarkably more quiet the rest of the house. There's a dog somewhere, and it's howling. There's some car horns blaring in the distance, and the sound he was told to listen for: clicking.

Yes, if he heard clicking when checking the area, he was to hide to stop her from getting him right there. But her clicks were quiet. The sound that indicated she was in the area rose only a little above the ambient noise of the space, and so he had to parce sounds very carefully. His ear was searching for small differences in volume, which made any change in volume even more intense. That's only when he was checking above the water. In other parts of the yard, there were other subtle sounds. Focusing on such minuscule sounds was stressful, scary even.

A loud noise and a dark shape moved up above him, frightening him. Todd was just about to peek his head up and take a look outside, but now he wasn't budging. Was it her? He slid out from the shadows to get a better look, but it was still too dark to see.

The amphibious mutant blinked, squinting real close before a wave of relief washed over him. He recognized the silhouette: It was Kurt. He couldn't help but stifle a snicker as he watched the other mutant frantically search the yard for a place to hide.

Todd slowly ascended, barely peeking his head out of the water, hiding under the tarp. Despite his movement, the water remained mostly placid. Kurt was fussing with the patio umbrella, trying to get it to open for him so he could hide inside. Todd just watched him silently.

Kurt was wrapping himself around the umbrella's pole when he caught a glimpse of something staring at him from the pool, and for a split second, he thought he was going to have a heart attack. Todd just gently shook his head, pressing a green finger to his lips.

Kurt was going to kick himself for almost getting scared by Todd Tolansky. He knew though that if he made too much noise, he and Todd would both be caught. So he just gave his frog friend a thumbs-up and stuffed himself inside of the umbrella, carefully closing it shut.

[ohmygillygoshoppler]

@thephoenixfirescout oh my fucking god

I do not understand women

[ohmygillygoshoppler]

can you write just a little snippet about the brotherhood boys just hangin out and bein buddies? I miss the stuff you would write for Darksiders and such~ I might just be able to get into the X-men because of you

Because of me?!

I think i might cry....

Ok, here's a little snippet of the larger fic im working on rn. @thephoenixfirescout featuring a game of rubber chicken confessions.

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Callie juggled the chicken around from one hand to the next. "What is... your fondest childhood memory-" she paused as she searched the faces of the people in the room, thinking about her question. "Sinjun!"

John wasn't paying attention, he was tapping away at the keys on his laptop. She threw the chicken at him regardless, getting a comical "bok," when it collided with Johnny's head.

"Ah, shit, wait- what's the question?"

"Fondest childhood memory, aussie." Tabby retorted, poking the back of his chair with her toe.

For what seemed like the first time all night, Pyro stopped typing for a moment. He blinked at the screen about five or six times before he scooted back a bit and stretched, pinching the bridge of his nose while he craned his spine back into his seat.

"Hell, that's a toughie..." He started.

"Yeah, I can imagine it's hard to have a fun time on a landmass full of things that wanna kill you." Dominik interjected.

"I remember when I was a kid, me and my mates would ride our bikes to school together, and there was this huge tree in a lot near the street me and my grandma lived on, and that tree was just loaded with Magpies-"

"Pause," Tabby leapt forward and held a hand over his mouth. "What's a magpie?"

"'S like a bin chicken."

A flurry of slaps, balled up wrappers and confused squabble erupted from the room as everyone started to wonder at the same time what the fuck a bin chicken was. John's Australian slang was lost among his peers.

"Uhhh, guys, I just googled "Bin Chicken," and have found a whole website devoted to hating the native Animalia of your home country, John." Pietro dashed over to his spot on the bed and held his phone out before John's laptop. The picture displayed was of a black and white bird with demonic looking orange eyes.

"THAT'S THE BITCH!" John took the phone and started scrolling. "THESE THINGS ARE EVIL! All birds are evil-"

Todd pointed a finger at John. "Let the records show Johnny boy here is scared of birds."

Callista nudged Todd and moved her feet out from under her, sitting criss-cross. "I said a fond childhood memory, Sinjun-"

"I'm gettin there, I'm gettin there," John wiped the palms of his hands on his jeans and turned his chair so he could face Callie. "So this tree was full o' magpies, and me and my mates would ride past that tree everyday on our way to school. Those magpies would attack us-"

"Jesus, John, that sounds like a nightmare." Todd interrupted.

"And it was, They got me good one year," John turned his head to show his left ear, he pointed out a small nick in the ear. "So my sweet old granny got the golden idea of makin me and the boys wear ice cream buckets on our heads, since for pride or for spite we wouldn't ever wear our helmets. So up until junior high, me and my mates would wear ice cream buckets around our neighborhood up until the folks who owned that lot cut that tree down and all the birds left."

"Okay, so John's a goofball who wore an ice cream bucket on his head for seven years because he got hate crimed by a bird." Wanda said in a dull tone as she popped another chip into her mouth.

He waggled a finger at her. "Not just any bird, Wands, but the devil incarnate. I pray you never have to feel the wrath of those nasty little vermin-"

The way his stoic Australian accent delivered that last ominous line sent a small wave of laughter throughout the room. He had the rubber chicken gripped in his left fist.

"Dominik, did you, or did you not, use my laptop to watch gay porn within the last forty two hours?" he casually tossed the rubber chicken to his friend's feet as the room exploded with laughter.

"How do you do it? I even went through the trouble of deleting your browser history? "

"Aaaand there it is-" Tabitha groaned with a frown and a twisted look of regret and remorse. For what, she would never be sure.